Spotify testing new system for labels to add tracks to playlists

Spotify is the world’s most-used music streaming service and is now testing a new system whereby labels can pay to add singles to user playlists to increase artist exposure. Under this program, free users only will have the tracks automatically added to their personal playlists: Spotify will use user listening habits and tastes to cater to the user, based on genre.

This special targeted advertising is separate from their usual means of playing ads between songs on the free service. The label will be paying to add the track, thereby creating an analogous system to pay-for-play when radio ruled the charts. Now that music streaming has determinedly taken over traditional album sales, and indeed even single downloads on services like iTunes, the Spotify program will help increase chart placements for tracks. According to chart methodologies currently in use by Billboard in the United States, a track must be played 10 times to count as one sale.

Portraying the new venture as an improvement for listener usage, Spotify remarked:

“We are always testing new promotional tools that deliver the highest relevancy to our users.“

Spotify must pay royalties per play, which left them in a $390 million deficit last year, despite making over $3.3 billion. Artists have complained about no longer earning revenue on their music, with Taylor Swift notably revoking access to her entire catalogue, despite later adding it as a way to target Katy Perry.